Hippocrates&#39; Handmaidens: Women Married to Physicians

This riveting new book tells what it is like to be a woman married to a physician. Until now, there has been little information available about doctors' wives, especially from their perspective. Because they have played their roles wellÂas self-effacing, staunch supporters of their husbands and their husbands' workÂthey have kept quiet. In Hippocrates' Handmaidens, these women speak candidly about the benefits and the disadvantages of being married to physicians. They share their universal fears and frustrationsÂof being abandoned for another woman and often, of having few skills or little work experience if they are; of fitting into the very rigid and highly critical medical community; of their feelings of jealously and/or competition with their husbands; and of their lack of power and control in their marriages. They also address the sanctity of medicine and doctors in our society and the traditional values and paternalistic attitudes within the medical community that directly influence their lives.